Birth, Death, and the Weight of Guilt — War and Peace

The little princess lies supported by pillows, a white cap on her head, the pains just having left her. Black hair lies round her inflamed, perspiring cheeks; her charming rosy mouth with its downy lip is open, and she is smiling joyfully. Prince Andrew pauses at the foot of the sofa. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear and excitement, rest on him without changing. "I love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so? Help me!" her look seems to say. She sees her husband but does not realise the significance of his appearance. He goes round and kisses her forehead. "My darling!" A word he has never used to her before. "God is merciful...." She looks with childlike reproach: she expected help from him and gets none, none from him either. She is not surprised he has come; his coming has nothing to do with her sufferings or their relief. The pangs begin again. Mary Bogdánovna advises him to leave. The doctor enters. Andrew goes out, meets Princess Mary, and they talk in whispers that break off. They wait and listen. "Go, dear," she says. He sits in the next room. A woman comes out frightened and is confused at seeing him. He covers his face with his hands. Piteous, helpless, animal moans come through the door. He tries to open it; someone holds it shut. "You can't come in!" The screaming ceases. Then a terrible shriek, it cannot be hers, she could not scream like that. He runs to the door; the scream ceases and he hears the wail of an infant.

"What have they taken a baby in there for?" Then suddenly he realises the joyful significance; tears choke him; he leans on the window sill and sobs like a child. The door opens. The doctor, sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale, jaw trembling, gives him a bewildered look and passes without a word. A woman hesitates on the threshold. Andrew goes in. Lise is lying dead in the same position as five minutes before, and despite fixed eyes and pallor the same expression is on her charming childlike face. "I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done to me?" In a corner something red and tiny grunts and squeals in Mary Bogdánovna's trembling white hands.

Two hours later Andrew steps softly into his father's room. The old man already knows. He stands close to the door; as soon as it opens his rough old arms close like a vice round his son's neck, and without a word he sobs like a child. Three days later the little princess is buried. Andrew goes up to give her the farewell kiss. In the coffin is the same face, eyes closed. "Ah, what have you done to me?" He feels that something gives way in his soul, a sin he can neither remedy nor forget. He cannot weep. The old man kisses the waxen little hands crossed on her breast; to him, too, the face seems to ask why, and he turns angrily away. Another five days, and young Prince Nicholas Andréevich is baptized. The wet nurse supports the coverlet with her chin; the priest with a goose feather anoints the boy's red, wrinkled soles and palms. His grandfather, godfather, trembling, afraid of dropping him, carries him round the battered tin font and hands him to Princess Mary. Andrew sits in another room, faint with fear lest the baby be drowned, and waits for the end. He looks up joyfully when the nurse brings the child, and nods approval when she tells him that the wax with the baby's hair did not sink in the font but floated.